BBT Group powers up 78kW data center at German hospital

Data center capacity in Baden-Württemberg spans an enormous range. Wirth Group has proposed a 707MW campus in Philippsburg. At the other end is a 78kW facility that BBT Group commissioned this month at Caritas Hospital in Bad Mergentheim.

BBT Group, a Koblenz-based Christian hospital operator and one of Germany's largest healthcare groups, started construction in October 2025. The 147-square-meter room is built with modular techniques. It is sized for ten racks. The design allows expansion to 220kW. Cooling extends the hospital's existing network; diesel generators cover emergency power. Data Center Dynamics, citing Data Center Group, put the cost at €3.6 million ($4.1 million). BBT says the facility will support digital services and AI applications across its hospitals and elderly-care homes in the region. It did not specify which applications.

At 78kW, the room would disappear inside a cloud provider's hall. BBT chose to build it, tied the cooling into the hospital's existing network, and kept diesel generators in reserve rather than renting capacity from a hyperscaler. The layout leaves room for expansion, and putting the compute next to the clinical data hints that the group expects its AI workloads to grow. At the opening ceremony, Manuela Zahn, Bad Mergentheim's first deputy mayor, told Caritas Hospital staff that a data center is 'the digital heart of modern medical facilities.'

Baden-Württemberg's existing stock stands at 32 data centers, according to DataCenters.com. The pipeline is far larger. Wirth Group has proposed a 707MW campus at Philippsburg. That is roughly 9,000 times the capacity of the Bad Mergentheim room. The University of Stuttgart is developing a supercomputer rated at 48.1 petaflops. The Bad Mergentheim launch adds nothing to the state's capacity math. The 220kW design ceiling means BBT has left itself room to grow. Whether BBT ever expands to that level may depend on the AI applications it has not yet named.